Omni Air International McDonnell Douglas DC10 30 accident
McDonnell Douglas DC10 30 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From HNO · Hololulu, HI to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport (GUM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA08FA062
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas DC10 30
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC10
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N720AX
- Operator
- Omni Air International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From HNO · Hololulu, HITo Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport (GUM), Agana
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Turbulence encounter
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The captain stated that the ride had been smooth at their cruise altitude of 36,000 feet, and the seatbelt sign was off. He further stated that there was some thunderstorm activity, and some towering cumulus in the area, and that the airplane’s radar indicated the presence of a cell about 30 miles south of the airplane’s position, with tops that reached about 28,000 to 30,000 feet. He said they encountered an area of higher clouds, but the radar still did not indicate any activity, and within a few seconds they felt an initial bump, followed by "moderate" turbulence. He said he then turned the seatbelt sign on, and a short while later he was notified that there were some injured passengers and flight attendants. The NTSB’s Recorder Laboratory, Washington DC, read out the DFDR, and the data indicated that at 13:27:22 FDR Recorded GMT, at a pressure altitude of 36,000 feet, the vertical acceleration changed from 0.9 g’s to 1.8 g’s to -0.5 g’s to 1.7 g’s and then back to 0.9 g’s all within 3 seconds, consistent with clear air turbulence. See the NTSB DFDR Factual Report. In addition the NTSB conducted a meteorological study, using data to include synoptic, upper air, and satellite data. See the NTSB Meteorological Factual Report.
Probable cause
An inadvertent in-flight encounter with unforecasted clear air turbulence
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA08FA062
- Event ID
- 20080723X01111
- Case number
- DCA08FA062
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9b3cf61f9373a74daf44932e3150a0927255af87ae0e93e9425de19e0e09f792; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:57:07.857Z.